


Forever

by noblydonedonnanoble



Series: It's Only Natural [5]
Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/noblydonedonnanoble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He promised her the forever the Doctor and Donna didn't get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever

When they filmed the scene where the Doctor took Donna's memories away, she cried. He pulled Donna into his arms, but simultaneously it was David comforting Catherine because their tears were completely genuine.

Catherine was watching Donna Noble lose everything that she'd come to know and love, and she had grown so attached to Donna that some crying was inevitable.

David cried too. He cried because Catherine, for all intents and purposes, had completely become Donna. David felt that he was in fact threatening to take away Catherine's meories of their own times together.

And so he hugged her, holding her tight and silently promising himself that he would never let her go like the Doctor was letting Donna go.

He whispered it in her ear as the cameras stopped rolling, and in her eyes he saw appreciation even though she said nothing in response.

As they left the wrap party and climbed into a cab, he said it again, that Catherine would never have to leave his side.

That night as he brushed strands of hair from her eyes and they drifted off toward sleep, he promised her forever, thinking of the forever that Donna wanted but didn't get.

It occurs to Catherine, that promise of forever, as she sits in the audience of David's wedding. She sees his eyes stray to her sometimes, and knows he's thinking of those forevers just as much as she is.

Some time near the end of the reception, long after the happy couple's first dance and after David's danced with almost everyone else imaginable--even John, to the amusement of everyone who was at all paying attention--he steals Catherine from her partner with a polite grin. 

"Congratulations," falls out of her mouth before she can stop it. It's not that she has a problem congratulating him, necessarily. It's more the way that the single word makes him look so disappointed, so tragic. And Catherine knows it's because of her, specifically; that if it weren't for her he would be dancing happily with Georgia or even _gone_  by now because he would have quite different things on his mind.

David's "Thank you," sounds pathetic and not at all genuine.

The two of them move around the dance floor silently, eyes locked together. Catherine is entirely too aware of the hand on her waist, the way it feels completly at home. He's thinking of her fingers and the countless times she's used them to tug on his hair.

David leans forward and kisses her cheek as the song ends and murmurs, "Forever," so quietly it's a wonder she hears.

Catherine can't helpbut wonder about that word, about forever. About how what they had, then, really felt like forever at the time.

And she wonders whether it matters if she has him forever, even if just in his heart. She wonders whether it would be preferable to have his heart but not his mind, or if perhaps she'd rather he just... forget.

When she's falling asleep withouth is arms around her, she can't help but think maybe forever means nothing.


End file.
